This should be interesting as there seems to be some bipartisan support at least on the corporate end of the spectrum. However, I’m curious to see how he handles this given what happened to the healthcare bill he backed.
Get ready for the usual lefty spin: tax cuts for the rich. Reaganomics was a failure. Same old story. Same old song and dance. I’ll just fast forward to the part where it either passes or fails.
I think he will be able to pass some sort of tax reform even with the complete failure that was the health reform bill. It should be much easier to sell to the general public but the Democrats are probably feeling pretty confident that they can sink it after how badly Trumpcare went.
If he doesn’t get tax reform passed this year then that does not bode well for the rest of his presidency or reelection chances.
Repeal and replace of Obamacare was not going to happen. Not the in the first 100, not ever. He had to try though as it was his campaign promise. AFAIC the dems can keep owning that albatross till it augers into the ground and scorches anyone near it.
I hope that he has done Dem support for his tax plans. The GOP is a tits on a boat, splintered party that only wants to feed at the trough. They want nothing to do with managing, cleaning, stocking… the trough. Without dem support he won’t get shit accomplish legislatively cause certain members of the GOP will oppose him just cause they can.
I’d be perfectly happy if he took a flamethrower to the entire tax code to eliminate all tax loopholes and made a flat tax across the board. Maybe even three brackets of 10-20-30% Or five of 10-15-20-25-30%.
Get rid of the stinking loopholes and offshore “tax shelter” nonsense.
Where do I find your bust in the economics hall of fame?
LOL. My bust is actually in the main hall of the “Sick of this B.S.” Hall of Fame. :jester:
There you go. I’m a flat taxer or a federal sales tax guy. Unfortunately it won’t happen.
I would imagine if Tax Preparers and Accountants have a Lobby, these guys are working hard to derail this and go to an easy to read and prepare tax change.
It is ridiculous that I’m shelling out $400 to get someone to look at every detail and I’m still getting screwed at the rate of 30%.
Being a Single guy with few deductions, trying to build a respectable 401K and all while taking it in the shorts by the IRS.
Okay, but the perceived success of Reaganomics was based on the demand stimulated by the defense build-up rather than by his supply-side measures.
Reagan’s policies were actually ‘accidental’ Keynesian-style market regulation:
A Keynesian stimulus happens when policy-makers deliberately seek to stimulate one or more of the components of aggregate demand to boost output, jobs and incomes during an economic recession. A Keynesian stimulus is designed to actively manage the level of and rate of growth of aggregate demand. An example would be to inject extra government investment into infrastructure projects and finance this through a higher level of government borrowing. https://www.tutor2u.net/economics/blog/qa-what-is-a-keynesian-stimulus-and-will-it-work
Reagan, in essence accomplished this by massive deficit spending on defense, not by his supply-side tax cuts.
Most real economists laugh at the Laffer Curve.
I was actually just making the point in a roundabout way that the left has this narrative that anything Reagan did or the Republicans do is bad.
Are you able to tax-defer your 401K contributions? What worked for me also was taking 1/2 of every pay raise (if you actually get those LOL) and putting it into voluntary tax-deferred contributions. You don’t miss money you never had. And one day, if you start early enough in your career, bang, you are maxing out, paying less taxes and on your way to a reasonably carefree retirement.
Also, trust me, kids cost more than their tax deductions. 
Clinton did little to change what Regan started except pay down the deficit and have some welfare reform forced upon him. He rode that wave of economics for two terms and almost a third.
Had we been left with Carters failed policies we likely would still have severe economic issues and still be fighting a “Cold War.”
I’m not on the left, just never drank the kool-aide. Reagan was a good President, his vision did what was best for national security, unfortunately it began a pattern of increasing deficits which finds us where we are at today.
Buddy, I’m putting in 20% before the company throws in their 6. I could legally put in more, I’m just at 15K and 55, so I could put in a bit more, but with everything else I’m obligated to, it would be a lifestyle change that would make this side a bit difficult.
I adjust my % with every raise in order to boost it up further, but having a 22 year old call and tell me he had an unexpected medical expense…well, you know how that will go.
Dad is still Dad and doing Dad stuff.
One thing people fail to mention is how even though Republicans claim fiscal responsibility they run bigger budget deficits than Democrats. The data is out there, if you look at spending as a percent of GDP since the 50’s Republicans have basically always spent more while most of the time cutting taxes as well. Reaganomics would work if they actually cut spending but when you double dip you better luck into something that just really jumpstarts the economy via innovation (see the technology boom during the Clinton years).
I had very conservative economics professors and they all laughed at “Reaganomics” and for good reason.
Here is the thing about Regan and his deficit spending.
A) If you were stationed in Europe as Carter was leaving office, you were likely setting on equipment that was useless and decades old. The only deterrence to the Russians jumping in to the Fulda Gap was the assumed possibility that Carter would have launched. I think he would have folded like a cheap card table.
The Military needed that money spent then.
B) Had the money spent on the Cold War been used to pay down that spending increase we would have been better off, instead we didn’t and before you know it we are doing the Middle East thing.
So I see cycles of ignoring military spending by the Democrats and then the Republicans trying to play catch-up and getting the blame for it.
Only problem with a flat tax is think of how many people going to get basically unemployed overnight. All those mom-and-pop CPAs, all those Auditor’s, tax lawyers, half them guys going to be out of work.
Which was why Reagan was elected. If you look at it, the brief recession of 1979 triggered by the OPEC crisis, catapulted him into office.
And, as Tom Clancy wrote Reagan killed the Russian Bear while America thought he was taking a nap in the Oval Office (paraphrease).
That is a simplistic and wrong explanation of Reagan and you are old enough to know better. What really made the 80s boom was the killing off of inflation. Now, Reagan didn’t have direct control over this, Paul Volcker did- but he could not have done monetarily what he did with out the political cover from Reagan.
You are old enough to know what the 70s was like and the high interest rates and stagnation. Volcker had to kill off inflation high interest rates to get price expectations back in line. Talk about the FED taking heat now? Nothing compared to back then. Killing inflation with resetting people price expectations (inflation) is hard and ugly- and very easy to do half assed, which ends you in an even worse spot.
Yes, deficits and debt increased under Reagan, and for that price we lived for 25 years with out being 30 minutes away from 200,000,000 dead Americans. That we squandered the Cold War peace rebates in the 90s and later is not Reagan’s fault. Defending the country and keeping us safe is a the legitimate function of the Fed govt, not all these transfer payments that we keep on doing.
Stop listening to skinny jean generation people who try to tell us about things we lived through. Reagan wasn’t perfect, but he was the right path at the right time, and the only path that gets us to where we are now- in a position to piss away being number 1.